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If he were closer, he would reach for her. Touch her hair. Her neck. Her face.
But if he were closer, he wouldn’t be able to do this.
Ben took another step backward. Then another.
May shut her eyes, and he reached for the door handle, blindly grabbing at the space behind him until his knuckles banged into metal.
When he wrenched the door open, she didn’t say anything. She didn’t call him back.
If you try to push me away again, I’ll go.
He’d pushed as hard as he could, and she was gone.
When he said goodbye, she didn’t even open her eyes.
* * *
After the door closed behind him, she had to imagine all the other sounds. The handle of the exit door. His footfalls across the asphalt parking lot. His key in the lock. The van door opening.
She didn’t decide to follow him, to fling open door after door until she felt the air on he
r face, full of cold and moisture. It just happened. She spotted his van in the lot and watched the lights come on.
Midday, but the sky had gone dark.
This was it.
No last embrace. No kiss goodbye from the man who’d kissed her so hard this morning, her mouth still felt swollen and soft.
She’d told him the truth, and he’d told her their future was a fantasy. Her worst fear—that she was doing with Ben the same thing she’d done with Dan. That she had no other mode, no other way of being in the world except this one, false way.
She’d known, of course. She’d known, but she hadn’t wanted to know.
He’d never invited her to love him. They had always been temporary, from the first night’s truce over tacos.
Stupid girl, to have fallen for a man like him.
Stupid heart, to keep hoping even now. Even as he backed his van out of the parking space.
Even as he turned the wheel, straightened the tires, and drove away.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Allie looked at the sky. It was easier than looking at her sister.
May stood alone in the parking lot, watching the empty road where Ben had been and wasn’t anymore.
The sky wasn’t much more pleasant to look at. It was a dirty gray, heavy with rain that wasn’t falling. Wind whipped the branches of the trees and blew May’s hair into a whirling gold-brown aura around her head.
Allie’s wedding day sucked.
She sucked. She’d been mean to her sister, and then she’d gone off and hid in a train car while May had been getting dumped. She wouldn’t even have known it happened if Mom hadn’t seen Ben leave and then come to fetch her.
Ben’s gone. May looks terrible. I don’t know what happened, but you have to talk to her.
Someone had to anyway. Mom was out of the question. At times like this, she was always trying to identify the bright side, and you ended up feeling like a jerk for casting such a pall on her day.
Matt was MIA. That left Allie.
